ACTIVE – ARCHIVE – RESEARCH
This essay aims to sum up the preliminary conceptions and the results of an archival research and research lab which was conducted and organized by the author at Artpool Art Research Center, Budapest, in the autumn of 2023, and supported by the Museum of Fine Arts with the participation of seven young researchers. Artpool – this unique artist-archive, presently art research center – also called “active – archive – research”, using Galántai’s term invented in 1979, was founded by him, his wife, and the fellow artist Júlia Klaniczay. Their personal presence in the lab’s research work, “the thought-exchange” – as Galántai understands teaching/learning – provided an opportunity to develop a new research method based on Michael Polanyi’s personal knowledge theory. The essay also highlights the possibilities of exploring parallels between Vilém Flusser’s and György Galántai’s thinking and opens up new perspectives for further research.
How to teach in the media environment: A reading of a Flusser lesser-known text from 1972
This paper outlines some aspects of Flusser’s concept of teaching as shown in some of his texts about education. It focuses mainly on a paper published in 1972 at the Revista Brasileira de Filosofia, titled ‘How to philosophize in mass culture?’. Grounded on a close reading of the paper, it argues that Flusser addresses three aspects of teaching that remain particularly important to contemporary teaching: (1) he sees culture as a living environment, and challenges the division on ‘high culture’, ‘popular’ and ‘mass culture’; (2) in order to be meaningful to students, teaching should treat mass culture seriously, both as reference and object; (3) teachers should not be afraid to include mass culture in their courses, as it is the source of the student’s main cultural codes. These elements are discussed against the social and media background of Flusser’s article.